November 1, 2009

Croatia - Days 1, 2, 3

We had a very long travel day on Thurs, which became Friday as we flew from Miami to Frankfurt. There we made our connection to Croatia Airlines after a 3+ hour wait, and arrived in Dubrovnik about 1:30PM on Friday, Oct. 30.

I'm having trouble uploading these pictures in any particular order, so we'll just tell you about each as they come up. More about Friday and Saturday later.

Today is All Saints Day. Even though it's Sunday, people still need to do their laundry, as you can see in this picture.
We saw so many locals with flowers yesterday and couldn't imagine where they were going with these very large potted plants, mostly variations of different mum plants. So today we followed them to the cemetary which is fairly close to our hotel. It's a wonderful custom honoring the dead with flowers and prayers. We didn't see a single grave without flowers. This is our hotel which is on the Adriatic Sea, which is about a 25 minute walk from the old city wall. We're on the 6th floor, which sounds a lot easier than it turned out to be because the lobby is on the 10th floor, (street level) meaning we have to go down to our room. The room is spacious and has the most modern bathroom we've ever seen in a hotel. In fact, this is our first experience in a 5 star hotel!
Shown here is a breathtaking view of the Old City of Dubrovnik. The city is completely surrpounded by a stone wall. We had hoped to walk around the city on the upper wall today, but since it's Sunday and All Saints Day, the walkway was closed. Hopefully, we will still have time to tour it tomorrow. Today we just roamed the old city, took lots of pictures, poked into some art galleries and had lunch at a sidewalk cafe. We have been blessed with fantastic weather. It's sunny with cloudless skies, breezy and cool. Perfect for walking around.

St. Blaze is the patron saint of Dubronik. His statue can be found all over the city. Here he watches over one fo the two entraces to the city - Pile Gate.

This is the view from our hotel room. We even have a private balcony with two comfortable deck chairs, making it great to just sit and enjoy the view, as well as picture taking.

Tonight we go to what is called a home hosted dinner, which is at the home of a local resident somewhere nearby - about a 45 min. bus ride. We'll let you know more about that tomorrow.




















3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Wow! It's so beautiful there ... love those views. So glad you're having such wonderful weather ... we're praying every day for your trip. So, am I understanding correctly that you are now a day ahead of us? All Saints' Day there while we were still celebrating Halloween? So weird LOL! Love you!

Jennifer said...

Yikes! I need an editor ... too many "so's" LOL!

Kwiltsfl said...

Have a marvelous time - the view from your room is breathtaking! Looking forward to more photos!